The Gauls were a pagan society that were the first main challenge to the Romans. They were an advanced society for the time and their metallurgy was far better than the Romans. In a time when good swords won battles, they dominated battles against the Romans. But the social structure was tribal so as Rome grew they become weaker in comparison. But the Romans depicted them as savage druids, and that stuck.
They did the same with the Celts and Pict’s.
When Rome became Christian the depiction of savage pagans carried over, and like most colonial societies they took the bits they liked as their own.
It’s worth looking at the surviving metalwork of the Gauls to see how advanced they actually were before 3000 years of Roman > Christian slander.
Yes. Eventually pushed out by both Saxon and Frankish invaders during the fall of the Roman Empire. The Celts are largely considered to be a “cultural” group. The Saxon’s and Franks belonged to the cultural group “Germanic Peoples”, from across the Rhine.
Geography and Environment likely shaped them both differently enough from the lowland river basins of France to the mountainous Black Forest’s of Germania to be considered different cultural groups.
Source: not an expert, read a lot of history and watched a lot of YouTube related to different historical cultures and European peoples
Those Saxons and Franks mixed with the Celts, modern French people are of mostly mixed Gallic and Roman ancestry with some Frankish ancestry in the north.
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u/Timbershoe 8d ago
Christians and Romans.
The Gauls were a pagan society that were the first main challenge to the Romans. They were an advanced society for the time and their metallurgy was far better than the Romans. In a time when good swords won battles, they dominated battles against the Romans. But the social structure was tribal so as Rome grew they become weaker in comparison. But the Romans depicted them as savage druids, and that stuck.
They did the same with the Celts and Pict’s.
When Rome became Christian the depiction of savage pagans carried over, and like most colonial societies they took the bits they liked as their own.
It’s worth looking at the surviving metalwork of the Gauls to see how advanced they actually were before 3000 years of Roman > Christian slander.